Remember the last (and only until Survivor 51) time the game started with an odd amount of players?

There’s been a lot of hype around our 21 newest castaways, withJeff Probstgoing so far as to say every single one of them is a star that they’ve saved specifically to be onSurvivor 51. And while it is a record-setting number of castaways for its pure mass, it’s not the first time we’ve seenSurvivorbegin with an odd number of players.

For that, we have to take things all the way back to season 14; the first time the show landed in Fiji. The season that began with 19 players—an odd number—for the first time inSurvivorhistory.

But it wasn’t planned that way!

There were in fact 20 contestants that arrived in Fiji, ready to compete. But one of the planned castaways—Melissa McNulty, a 27-year-old talent manager from Los Angeles—suffered a panic attack the night before the season was meant to kick off. Due to the severity of it, the medical team actually pulled her from the game just hours before it started.

After the abrupt exit and shift, production didn’t have enough time to fly in an alternate—this being before alternate players were brought to Fiji just in case—and ended up having to begin the game with 19 players.

As this season began with the Haves and Have Nots twist, all players arrived on one beach together and built a shelter before nominating a leader to divide the players between two tribes: Moto and Ravu. They chose Sylvia Kwan as their leader and because she was the odd-one-out, she was sent to Exile Island while the two tribes went on to compete in immunity.

It wasn’t until after the first player was voted out—Jessica deBen from the Ravu tribe—that Sylvia was allowed back into the game, joining the down tribe to even out the competition.

But even getting a player back couldn’t help Ravu as they continued to lose immunity and ultimately sent Sylvia—their de facto leader—home third.

And if you’re reading this wondering how this sounds and awful lot like how the beginning ofSurvivor 51is starting to appear in teaser videos and first look photos, then you and I are on the same wave length. I can’t help but wonder if we’re not just getting the return of a Day 1 Exile Island isolation, but also the Haves and Have Nots twist.

Basically, the twist allowed the winning tribe of the first immunity challenge to live at the nice shelter they’d all built on Day 1 while the losing tribe was sent to a very bare bones camp with only very basic materials. This twist only ever appeared in the one season of the US series, though it was integrated into two seasons of the Australian version of the franchise.

Do you think we’re about to get this twist back to kick offSurvivor 51? Like Jeff keeps telling us, anything is possible!

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